Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Thursday July 10, 2008 @09:12AM
from the teaching-magic-in-science-class dept.

H0D_G writes "The US state of Louisiana has passed the 'Science Education Act,' a piece of legislation that could allow Intelligent design to be taught in schools. From the article: 'The act is designed to slip ID in "through the back door"'"

The thing is, the act of faith means accepting the book as literal truth. If you have that level of faith, then nothing is going to shake you from it.

Really the issue at hand is not whether your faith or absence thereof is "right", it is that faith does not belong in science class. Faith belongs in church, and at home, and in bible study groups. Faith belongs in your heart, with your friends, not in science class. What I would not oppose is a theology class in schools as an elective, much as political science is an elective. If the student wants to take said class and learn about different religions of the world, possibly with guest speakers from various faiths (Muslim, Christian, Sheik (sp?), Buddhist, Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.) that's fine with me. Just call a spade a spade, it's not science, it's theology and faith.-nB

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful [as a Babel fish] could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
-HHGttG, Douglas Adams

Nothing about faith means believing in something absurd. The Bible does not call for you to have faith in The Bible, depending on what you read it's asking for your faith and obedience to a higher power, and to an overall philosophy.

There IS having blind faith in the letter of the Bible, but I don't think that's a consequence of faith itself or anything written in the Bible. That's a perversion introduced later by man.

Regardless of the debate on faith & science, if I were devout in any religion, I would object to this solely for the reasons you almost said: If you allow one religious opinion, you must allow ALL religious opinions. I know if I send my child to a biology class here, he'll learn about evolution to some degree or another. Like it or not, I know what he's learning. If I don't believe in evolution I can steer him away from it and hope he eventually sees it my way.

However, if we allow any religious debate in science, we must allow ALL religious debate in science. Thus ID, creationism, FSMism etc must all be allowed. The US 1st amendment, as the supreme court has ruled in the past, applies to public schools. My child can be learning anything from creationism to circumstances in which he must kill his wife or daughter to defend the families honor, to when it's ok to rape young girls to create the next messiah. I can't mount a defense against EVERYTHING and my own religious education doesn't include every wacko out there. Some of those ideas are highly dangerous and illegal. True, by high school hopefully his moral underpinnings are in place, but having been through high school I know teenagers to be impressionable particularly to authority figures.

Surely it's not possible to be an atheist fanatic (unless you believe that atheism is a religion).

On the contrary, I have met an atheist who, if not fanatical, was certainly very strident on the subject. More out of irritation at his arrogance than disagreement with his position, I decided to start taking apart his arguments. This was pretty easy to do and the sequence went more or less as follows:
"So how did the Universe begin then?"
"It was the Big Bang! Everything was really compressed and then it exploded."
"So what made it explode?"
"Well, ah, it was just too compressed - like really compressed"
"So if it takes so much force to pull it together in the first place, how did that happen?"
"Well that's what scientists tell us."
"And you have faith in the scientists?"
"Yes, wait no! Not faith!"

Now yes, of course someone else can give better answers to these (I can myself), and the obvious answer to the last point is that "scientists" (I hate the way people talk as if scientists are some separate species of humanity) have been able to produce technological wonders that I have witnessed which means I can put some reliance on their statements even if I don't understand the reasoning. But that was not the point in this case, the point was that I had someone stridently belittling others for their faith when that someone wasn't personally able to support their own beliefs with more than faith themselves.

A fanatical agnostic? Now that would be something unusual. But in some places, and particularly the USA it seems, atheism is a political position and yes, you do seem to get fanatical ones.

You'll notice all kinds of gods in Buddhist iconography and mythology. If you're a Buddhist, you're not expected to believe in any of them. You can if you want, but belief isn't an end in itself. Belief is something that on its own is hard to maintain. You can't be expected to believe in something all the time. You may believe in the non-existence of ghosts, you might find it difficult to maintain that belief if you are alone in a creepy house.

Since a belief is something you put mental energy into, it ought to pull its weight. Therefore, a Buddhist might ask, not whether a belief is true, but whether a belief is useful. Etymologically, the English world "belief" carries this sense of investment, being related to "beloved".

In the case of Last Tuesdayism, you can't prove its factuality one way or the other, so it's pointless to have an opinion on that. But a Buddhist might ask, "Well, suppose everything was created last Tuesday. What would be different?" Well, one thing that might be different is that you might choose to forgo revenge against somebody who "injured" you on Monday. The utility of Last Tuedayism, then, is this: it raises the question of whether your past pain is a better guide to choosing your behavior than your future happiness.

The Buddha himself once referred to beliefs as being like rafts. Once you have crossed the river, you leave them behind. Christianity, unfortunately, filtered down to us through Greek thought, with its bitter rivalry between philosophical schools. Therefore, much more emphasis is put on orthodoxy (right teaching) over orthopraxy (right action). Whereas the Jews produced Talmudic commentaries from almost every conceivable position, Christians produced diatribes against each other for heresy (which comes from the Greek word meaning to "choose" -- that is to choose for oneself).

You make fun of Christianity's aversion to homosexuality, but the fact of the matter is that the harsh restrictions on the lifestyles of Christians make the taboos such as homosexuality and miscegenation all the more attractive. Such extremes such as celibacy have forced even priests into the arms of pederasty.

Christianity and religion as a whole encourages the polarization of actions into "good" and "evil" and by forcing the pendulum to the "good" side makes the "evil" side more attractive than an a-moral philosophy can do.

Such extremes such as celibacy have forced even priests into the arms of pederasty.

That's an interesting perspective. I've always thought that the opposite was true: that the priesthood attracted homosexual pedophiles because of the lifestyle and ready access to children under the guise of a trusted authority. I wonder if this is something that can be reliably studied?

The priesthood has also traditionally provided a mechanism of denial for self-loathing homosexuals: if you're gay and believe it is immoral/sinful/whatever and don't want anybody to know about it, choose an occupation whose description and qualifications are ostensibly antithetical to homosexuality.

Note that the priesthood is not the only mechanism available for such denial: being a mega-preacher or a republican politician with a 'family values' platform are also high-profile examples.

Why can't people recognize that "God" is a metaphorical reference to the universe which science is dedicated to studying?

When a scientist brings forth an equation that describes the manner in which mutation and natural selection come together to create higher order life out of lower order life, which was created out of chemical soup, they are "contemplating the nature of God".

It's such a stupid thing to fight about. If you took a perspective where you were using scientific tools to examine God in which we all live, and you subjected your conclusions to rigorous processes with peer examination, and you created a model based on verifiable facts that described the "Personality" of God, it wouldn't be any different from modern science.

The equations of a scientist are an abstract representation of the Personality of God, and the stories of religion are personified representations of the equations of a scientist. Everyone is talking about the same damned thing, and arguing about which metaphor they like the best.

It's like watching two parents fighting over whether their daughter is a beautiful little flower or a cute little button. The religious communities and the scientific communities are just as bad as each other in this regard.

First, I highly recommend you read "Finding Darwin's God" by Dr. Ken Miller for an interesting treatise on the interplay between the realms of science and faith.

But more than that I recommend that rather than shoehorning the idea of spiritual faith into an idea of science you accept that for most people faith has little to do with making a metaphorical reference to natural phenomenon. It may turn out that you're precisely correct - that the idea of 'God' is best equated to the idea of the 'Universe as a whole'.

It may be - and probably is - that spiritual faith has little to do with 'using scientific tools' at all. It doesn't have to do with equations or with rigorous processes. Indeed, if you compare the modern conception of science to Buddhism's Noble Eight-fold Path, it fits pretty well into step five; begging the question of what the others are, or are for?

Traditionally the answer to that has been a very personal one. But I encourage you to recognize that while you can say that science is a way of examining God, this is not true for all people - that spirituality has little to do with the explanation of the material experience. Until there is that general acceptance there will be a great deal to fight about.

You are the one that isn't thinking critically. All these religions say in their texts that God is the Universe and the Universe is God. Jesus was always going on about how God was everyone, and under every rock, and in the sky, etc. Allah isn't permitted to be depicted as a person because people are meant to remember that Allah isn't a person. And on, and on, and on.

Thing about it is, religion has a lot to tell us about man and his societies that isn't really scientifically verifiable. You can't do an experiment where you take a few human cultures, give them rules to live by, let them sit in the dish for 5 generations, then see what the results are. You'll be dead before there is any data.

Take a look at Evolutionary Psychology [wikipedia.org]. They try to break it all down, from the smallest granularity, the individual, right on up to cultural systems. If you're going to try to find predictive patterns in cultural systems and agree on rules for a society that elevates certain values (personal freedom perhaps?) without destroying itself in x number of generations, you need to look at the religious/cultural values of history, study their interactions both external and internal, and attempt to make deductions.

As our world fills up and mankind grows increasingly powerful, these are going to become increasingly important questions to answer if we don't want our cultural systems to knock us back down a notch. And there is ample room for contributions to the discussion from both the scientific and religious communities, if they can ever stop bickering about terminology.

All these religions say in their texts that God is the Universe and the Universe is God. Jesus was always going on about how God was everyone, and under every rock, and in the sky, etc.

Not at all. "God = Universe" is pantheism, which predates Christianity, yet the latter has considered pantheism to be a heresy from the very beginning. And indeed, the central tenet of Christianity is the idea of a God as a person, and Universe as his creation - and certainly a creator cannot be a part of what he himself has created entirely. It is the same in all Abrahamic religions.

Allah isn't permitted to be depicted as a person because people are meant to remember that Allah isn't a person.

Wrong again. Allah does have personhood. The restriction is in place so that people do not start to worship the image of Allah instead of Allah himself (and seeing how Christians worship images and symbols of Christ, and icons of saints, it makes some sense).

How about, "If you lie, you will have to maintain multiple subjective realities within your mind to avoid being caught, and you will still get caught anyways. Extended along the timespan of a lifetime, you will become a creature without an identity of your own, spawning new partial identities for yourself constantly in response to external stimulus, unable to say with any degree of confidence who you are or what you believe. You will be powerless to hold your form when you meet a man with integrity. When you enter this subjective state of being, you will already be in Hell, and you will stay there for the remainder of your life."

Stop taking things so literally. This is no different from high school science, where they explain reality to you one year, and you take it on faith that they're not lying to you, then the next year, they explain how things that were presented as conclusive facts last year are actually a good deal more complex than was presented to you, and the things they taught you last year were really an oversimplified fairy tale to get you headed in the right direction.

Wow, troll? Is there really someone who missed the whole Catholic priest scandal?

To mods: I wasn't implying that all Catholic priests are pedophiles... sheesh!

It was a good question to pose. We naturally assume the priesthood to be of good intention.. if we never question the priesthood, it is, as you posited, a perfect place for pedophiles to infiltrate. Much akin to the idea of the creation of the world.. if we don't seriously question the biblical idea, it leaves the door open for the wrong idea to be implanted by fools posing as religious authorities.

Though I don't disagree with your conclusion, your support is... lacking. Why we don't hear about longshoreman pedophiles may actually be because there aren't any kids there, so those pedophiles can't actually commit the crime they want to. Cause and effect may be reversed - those who have a philia for children remove themselves from temptation by becoming longshoremen - a brilliant way to deny your criminal urges, if you were smart about it. Sort of like why alcoholics who are actually trying to recover from that disease generally would avoid bars and pubs.

ID is not a theory. Please stop perverting that word. A "theory" is a scientific term for a model that is backed by evidence, has not been rejected by evidence, and is falsifiable.

ID is NOT backed by evidence and is NOT falsifiable, thus it is NOT a theory. It is a belief. Evolution can be proved wrong. ID cannot be.

Of course, nothing in science is ever proven correct either, we just teach the best model we have and work from there. If someone discovers a better model, the current one gets replaced. Keep ID where it belongs: in a comparative religion or philosophy course. It is not science.

ID has no place in any science curriculum. It has just as much place as Last Thursdayism or FSMism./rant.

ID is not a scientific theory, but it is a theory. The word simply has multiple meanings, and I believe a great deal of confusion comes from this unfortunate fact.

In the vernacular, "theory" is a guess used to explain some event, usually on circumstantial or incomplete evidence - an idea based on speculation. Non-Slashdot nerds use the word all day long to explain things, so it's not a bastardization. A close scientific equivalent is hypothesis.

A scientific theory, is, of course, entirely different. Two meanings, one word, and one horrible coincidence that gives IDers ammunition against us evil Neo-Darwinists:)

I respectfully disagree. I was gonna cut you some slack until that one:

Back to the question of ID, I think schools should offer both teachings. Neither are provable as correct or incorrect, they are both theories, but the students should be allowed to decide what they believe in and what makes sense to them.

You can't teach ID as science, because it is not science. If you'll teach it, teach it in theology along with the other creation myths, where it belongs.

I just feel, and this is from my limited understand of evolution and Darwinism, that evolution isn't truly science either.

Based on your comments, I'd say that it's not so much your understanding of evolution that's lacking, as your understanding of the principles of science.

For a theory to qualify as "truly science" absolutely does not require it to be perfect or complete. A scientific theory is not a collection of facts that reveal an absolute truth flawlessly. How could it? What is important is not the answer, but how you get to it.

The scientific method, as used by evolutionary biology, chemistry, astrophysics, and every other branch of the sciences, requires that you take four steps:

Observe

Form a hypothesis

Make predictions about what would happen if the hypothesis were true

Test the hypothesis, by looking for actual occurrences that disagree with your predictions

On the other hand, Intelligent Design follows a much simpler process:

Believe

The beauty of evolutionary theory is that at any moment, someone could turn up some piece of evidence that absolutely, undeniably proves that it's not true. And if that happened, biologists would start working on a new theory that fits the facts better. That's how it's supposed to work!

Tell me: What would have to happen, tomorrow, to prove that the "theory" of Intelligent Design is false?

The practice of celibacy itself is more of the problem than the Catholic church or priesthood, per se.

Interesting tidbits:

1) The Apostle Peter (erroneously deemed the first pope) definitely was married.2) The Apostle Paul declared his situation as somewhat of a unique gift, not a requirement of ministry.3) The Bible clearly teaches celibacy is not something you should attempt to maintain if you retain desire. Instead you should get married. This is why one of the first things priests who started studying the Bible anew in the days of the Reformation was to renounce their vow of celibacy and get married.4) The Bible more or less predicts the heresy of enforced celibacy would arise in later years.5) In the Catholic church, this is NOT an issue of doctrine. It is simply an issue of Church Law. As such, any pope could wave their hands and dispense with the practice altogether. The structure is fairly rigidly in place at this point. Such a pope would likely be killed or at the very least "managed" so as not to do this. But the point is the Catholic church could do away with this by the mere flick of a pen.6) Since it is not an issue of doctrine, there actually ARE married priests in the Catholic church. There is an established procedure for such. However, these are rather rare at the moment.

I don't even believe that it's any particular sect of Christianity. I know members of various denominations, and the majority of any seems to believe that ID is simply a rebranding of creationism, and by definition isn't science. (Although, most of the people I know are either employed, or related to those employed in the life sciences).

The one group that seems to be more highly associated with ID in my personal experience (for what it's worth) is Born Again Christians. My grandmother is a firm believer in ID as something that should be taught in schools along side science, but then again she's also emails me religious spam half a dozen times a week

There are plenty of well-documented examples of bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics. That, in the context the bacteria are in, is beneficial and passed on.

There are a bazillion other examples, but this is the most obvious and trivial. Because not only can you do experiments like that in the lab, it tends to mess up your *other* experiments if you assume that a strain of bacteria will forever be antibiotic-sensitive.

Apparently you haven't seen this write up on Ars. It's about a study over a series of years, at the end of which a novel mutation developed that was beneficial to an E. coli population that started out from a single inoculum.

Over the course of 44,000 generations, they evolved the ability to metabolize citrate. They'd been incubated with citrate since 1988 and recently started using it as a substrate for metabolism. This study satisfies all 3 of the criteria you just indicated

Without going into a semantics discussion about how you manipulated to quote into something a fair bit different, you're even then only almost right.

You're only almost right, and not completely so, because you're missing a couple of fundamental issues. For one, something being scientific doesn't entail it being accurate, or even true. Galileo's heliocentric model was scientific in nature, as it was susceptible to experimentation, but was ultimately inaccurate when compared to the (unscientific) orbs model of the time, only to be superseded by Kepler's as the leading heliocentric model. Darwinism was inaccurate in some aspects, but was susceptible to refutation through observation, in proper scientific fashion. Those observations led to refinements, rather than refusal by the scientific community as a whole, indicating that it was a pretty good starting point.

Hell, in this sense, even ID can be seen as scientific, insofar as you make a clear statement that God created life as it is, and that living creatures are unchanging (roughly speaking, I'm sure you can phrase it in a much better way). This statement is perfectly reasonable as science, insofar as I can experiment, and determine that today's creatures are different from creatures from 1 million years ago, or that today's creatures are changing, and both observations would refute it in a perfectly scientific manner. The problems begin when ID "scholars" start "rectifying" and dodging and trying to evade contradictory observations.

Secondly, not actually having made observations doesn't mean a (presumably scientific) theory doesn't set the framework for those observations to be made. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics both set forth results that were unverifiable with what was the state of the art at the time they were originally conceived. Even today, more than a century past the Annus Mirabilis, we keep coming up with novel observations regarding relativity. Yet the 4 articles Einstein published at the time were considered extraordinary (and most definitely scientific).

One of the defining characteristics of E.coli is the inability to metabolize citrate. If it metabolizes citrate, it's not E.coli anymore.

Could you cross breed this "new" version of citrate metabolizing E. Coli with the original strain?

Erm, you need to consult a biology textbook about how bacteria reproduce. Hint: They don't need partners to do so. That makes cross-breeding a bit difficult. Especially since a strain of E.coli was used that doesn't do the conjugation thing, either.

Your failure is one of scale. You fail to take into account that this is one experiment. Nature doesn't work that way. Nature experiments with THOUSANDS of different "petri dishes" every moment of every day. It doesn't care about reproducibility or the scientific method. Another experiment might have made this switch in 20 generations instead of 44,000. And even if it took 44,000 generations, that's only 44,000 years for platypus's.

Parallel evolution, immense timescales. You don't go from a door-mouse to a platypus in one step. It'll take you 10 million years, the right conditions and a shit-load of serendipity. If you had to do it all over again, you could never guarantee it would happen because you have no idea of the selective pressures applied, when and in what situations they were beneficial.

We have proven that life EVOLVES. We will probably never be able to prove that all life came from a SINGLE cellular parent (probably because it didn't).

Your broad brush that says it's cool to hate Christianity right now is incorrect. Some people that label themselves Christian give the concept a bad name.

In the US, the separation of church and state should be strong; the concept's been in the US Constitution as a principle from the Articles of Confederation. Once again, a legislature tries to impose dogmatic/orthodox beliefs on others. It's been happening as long as the constitution has been around, and it will be struck down like the rest of the attempts.

Louisiana now joins Tennessee, Kansas, Indiana, and other jurisdictions where the votes have been for legislated morality.

And so fie on your sense of hatred of Christians-- it's a small orthodox lunatic minority that gives Christianity a bad name. Fight them.

It's your mythos, and I don't want my children getting your mythos passed off as fact. Freedom also means freedom from mythos-expostulating nutcases, and that includes all of the proselyters, evangelists, and other teachers of mythos. I get to choose what my children learn; it is my duty, responsibility, and gift, not yours, or other religious peoples.

And you've assigned the blame to a small sect in the Roman catholic church, when there's small sects in nearly all religious groups that don't practice what they preach.

I'm sure I'll be modded flamebait or troll, but this is a serious question. I really want to know.

Is there any sect of Christianity that practices what it preaches?

For example, do the old testament rules apply or not? When it suits their agenda, the old testament is the unerring word of god. When they want a ham sandwich, the old laws don't apply any more; they've been superseded by the new testament.

I wonder about this too. Homosexuality is an abomination, and so are shell fish. So, why is it that shell fish are ok now, but homosexuality is not? You'd think an abomination is an abomination, right?

Except the Catholic Church doesn't consider sex dirty or evil. Certain sexual practices, and who you do it with might be evil, but sex as practiced between a married man and woman is not evil, but sacred.

The fact of the matter is that some priests are sick individuals who are previously inclined to this sort of action, and choose to become priests because not getting married isn't a sacrifice to them, and this inclination wasn't discovered during their formation (training).

Well, yes, they did. It was a small inland lake that people lived around, and a large storm caused the barrier between it and the sea to erode, and the sea came into the lake. It flooded everything for 20 miles from the shore of the lake. The survivors of this made the great flood origin story.

They found huts and such 20 miles out from shore, and the geological evidence backed this up, which is why they think its true.

As a member of the Church of FSM, I am insulted. If they are allowed to teach ID in the classroom, then the story of the Flying Spaghetti Monster should be allowed as well.
Blessed be his noodly greatness!

Well, given how badly misreported this law has been, I'm not surprised that you misunderstood it.

All this law does is provide legal protection for teachers to tech "alternate views" to the Theory of Evolution. It is NOT exclusively restricted to ID teaching. This could, logically, also include FSM theory. So don't worry, be Happy! Teachers in LA can now ALSO tell children about the Noodly beginnings of humanity in addition to other creationist teachings.

Seriously, this really is much ado about nothing. It's just an anti-stupid lawsuit law, to protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes ToE is correct. That's it, nothing more, no matter what the militant Atheist sites and D-Kos may say.

... to protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes ToE is correct.

So, should we also protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes the Earth is round?

A teacher's job is not to tell the children what some people believe, his job is to teach what is known to be the most accurate theory in existence.

As for teaching alternative views, I have nothing against that, as long as they are presented exactly as that: alternative. If a teacher presents the "ID" theory in class, it should be shown why ID is not a reasonable alternative to evolution. Children should be aware that ID exists, because they will find it mentioned outside of class, but they should be aware that a well-informed and intelligent person would have absolutely no doubt that evolution is the correct alternative.

A teacher's job is not to tell the children what some people believe, his job is to teach what is known to be the most accurate theory in existence.

Exactly. A teacher's job is to impart knowledge and accepted theories to allow for some critical thinking. If they want to grow up and do research into ID and can demonstrate that it can stand to scientific scrutiny then, and only then, should it be taught in our public school system.

If those ignorant of accepted science and who think and act on religious beliefs find their way on to somebody's National ticket, I will vote for the other guy by default. What one wants to believe for themselves, in their own time - that's their prerogative and I endorse it. However, it's another thing making National or State policy on those beliefs. Never put the control of weapons into the hands of the delusional- only bad things can happen. Case in point? 1930-1940s Germany.

A teacher's job is not to tell the children what some people believe, his job is to teach what is known to be the most accurate theory in existence.

I disagree. A science teacher's job is to teach science. This means that they should educate their students on currently accepted scientific models and show how they fit into the scientific process.

I get frustrated hearing people talk about scientific models as if their accuracy can be measured. Their *predictability* can be measured. We don't have a clue what's *really* happening. And we don't have to in science.

The scientific process is about making models. We want the simplest model whose predictions can be observed. We value the simplest model, not because it's most likely to be true, but because it is simple. Who wants to use a complicated model when a simple model predicts everything that you can see?

ID fails as a scientific model in several respects. First *it makes no predictions*. So, as a scientific model, it is completely useless. "God did it" doesn't help me decide if I should try to wipe out the rabbits in Australia with a disease. There are lots of other problems with ID as a scientific theory. But you know what, I don't even go there because ID is not useful.

Now, I have absolutely *no* problem with someone teaching ID in a religion class. Religion is where we make believe that we understand how the universe really works. While we're at it, lets put the people who preach that our current scientific models is *actually* what's happening there too. Because that's just another religion.

As we can not directly observe the universe, we can say nothing (very much) about what is really there. We can say what we observe and we can predict what we will observe in the future, But that is not truth. It is, however, *useful* since our interaction with the universe is through our observations.

So to recap: Science is about making useful models. Religion is about conjecturing about the truth of the universe. Don't mix them up.

All this law does is provide legal protection for teachers to tech "alternate views" to the Theory of Evolution.

And pray tell, what scientific alternative to Evolution is there? Name one scientific hypothesis or theory which can be used as a substitute for Evolution.

Contrary to your sniping at militant atheists*, this DOES allow the teaching of ID and other religious, not scientific, based precepts in a science curriculum.

This could, logically, also include FSM theory

Um, yeah. I dare you to find one teacher in Louisiana who, even as a joke, would teach anything about the FSM. I guarantee you that should any teacher be so bold to do so, calls for their head on a pike would immediately go out regardless of what you claim this law says.

Here's a question: why is it that one, and ONLY one, religious group wants their viewpoint shoved down everyone elses throat yet, when the mention of allowing children being exposed to other religious or cultural viewpoints these same people have apoplectic seizures because somehow that could "contaminate" the children. If it's acceptable to shove your views down my kids throat, why can't I do the same to yours? After all, if you're just trying to provide equal opportunity to show different points of views, then you shouldn't have a problem with other people having their say.

*I laugh every time this phrase is used because a large portion of the people who don't want ID to be taught in school come identify themselves as one of the four major religious groups.

Public school teachers have no right to teach "alternate views" based on mythology and superstition. If a chemistry teacher starts teaching alchemy, they should be fired for incompetence. Same goes for a science teacher trying to teach Intelligent Design.

So what? You said it yourself. It allows teachers to teach 'alternate views' of the Theory of Evolution. Such as that it's wrong, and they'd better read their Bibles. The protection from lawsuits is just a happy side-effect.

If you think that this will ever be used to teach anything other than creationism, then you are:

1) Hopelessly Naive.2) Someone who has never been to Louisiana.

This law will ensure that no one from Louisiana will ever receive a real education.

All this law does is provide legal protection for teachers to tech "alternate views" to the Theory of Evolution. It is NOT exclusively restricted to ID teaching. This could, logically, also include FSM theory. So don't worry, be Happy! Teachers in LA can now ALSO tell children about the Noodly beginnings of humanity in addition to other creationist teachings.

That's the words. Every law consists of two parts: The words and the interpretations. Judges do and will ask what the intention of the law was, and I think GP as well as almost everyone else here correctly assumed the same thing that judge will end up with.

But if you're a teacher in that area, why don't you test it out? Teach the FSM creation theory. No, wait, that wouldn't be taken seriously, and religiots are bad at humour - teach the islamic creation theory, and omit the christian one. Wanna bet on the number of lawsuits that'll hit you before you're even through?

Seriously, this really is much ado about nothing. It's just an anti-stupid lawsuit law, to protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes ToE is correct. That's it, nothing more, no matter what the militant Atheist sites and D-Kos may say.

Name one acknowledged evolutionary scientist who today considers the theory of evolution to be incorrect. Not minor detail nitpicking, an actual scientist in this discipline who thinks the whole theory is bonkers and should be replaced with something else entirely. Just one and I'll shut up.

The fact of the matter is that Darwin is right up there with Newton and Einstein. There is as much doubt in evolution as there is in relativity. Both have been tested extensively and passed - again, and again, and again.

Astrology is actually more valid than ID, since it's a scientific theory. About any variant of astrology is falsifiable -- it gives testable consistent predictions. Predictions which are largely false, but a disproved theory is still a theory.

Astrology is actually more valid than ID, since it's a scientific theory.

No, no it's not. Maybe back in the "stupid ages" you could have argued it was a hypothesis, but never a theory.

According to the National Academy of Sciences,"Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature that is supported by many facts gathered over time."

About any variant of astrology is falsifiable -- it gives testable consistent predictions.

Wether something is falsifiable or not isn't relevant to wether something is true. It's only relevant to wether you can prove it's true. Imagine it's the year 1000 BC. Some crackpot submits a hypothesis called Quantum Mechanics. Quantum Mechanics would be as true back then as it is nowadays, but you'd never be able to prove it in that era with their technology.

If you're really suggesting that a falsifiable idea is in some way superior to non-falsifiable ones, then surely in the year 1000 BC astrology would be superior to Quantum Mechanics, which would be quite wrong.

Do not mix falsifiable ideas with non-falsifiable ones. They don't mix. It's apple's and oranges, *not* apples and rotten-apples.

A theory, something that ID is not.

I'm gonna go with "duh" here.And besides, who here ever said it was a theory?

Born in 1971 to parents recently arrived from India, Jindal is a convert to Roman Catholicism and a Rhodes scholar - hardly the profile of a typical Bible-belt politician

There's no need to be a "Bible-belt" politician - a simple politician will do.

It seems that in Louisiana the Bible thumpers have gained some pretty big influence, if the 94-3 and unanimous votes mean anything. A veto would have no chance to stand, so Jindal took the easy way out and signed the law.

However, he might have lost a lot in the process. By not challenging the majority, he just stands in the middle of the mainstream. If he had vetoed the law, he would have stood as a voice for reason. He might have lost the next election, but he's liable to lose it anyhow, since he seems to be indistinguishable from at least 94 other politicians.

Our last Governor was Blanco, who was never very strong. She only won because her competition was yet another corrupt old white guy no one liked, and Jindal, an Indian. The apathetic white male population basically didn't show up, and so women carried the vote. I'm all for a good female candidate, but Blanco was never it. My mother and Aunt were both organizers of NOW, my mother founded the Women Business Owners Association of Baton Rouge, and was a very politically active feminist. When Blanco was elected, both my mom and Aunt were PISSED. Because basically, the woman was a wishy-washy wimp. When Katrina and Rita hit, all she could ever manage to do was cry and whine.

This made Jindal a shoo-in for the next election. While he looks fine on paper, he's anything but mainstream. He was a proponent of teaching ID in schools well before he was ever elected. To suggest Jindal would attempt to veto this would be akin to suggesting Bush would have tried to veto the Patriot Act.

Wonder if I'll be reading about this in 20 years from the prospective that this is what allowed religious fanatics to create generations of religiously indoctrinated Christianized children that jail and execute intellectuals.

I hear this excuse for ID all the time. "We need to teach both, for the children to have a well rounded education".

I'll meet them half way. Go ahead teach your ID in schools, For The Children. And because we care so much that the children receive both sides of the story, you start teaching evolution in Sunday School. After all, it's for the sake of the children.

Actually, I remember being taught Evolution as a kid... in Catholic School. They also described Darwin as the man, right down to his own religious convictions, and his assertions that Evolution was never meant to supplant religious belief (which makes the whole proposition of Evolution as an anti-religious proof to be silly at best). IOW, we got the full scientific curricula, as well as the historical and personal context.

Meanwhile, the public schools (by comparison) still teach the lowest-common-denominator version of it.

This brings up something bigger than Evolution though, IMHO. While Catholic schools still teach classes in Logic, Critical Thinking, and Rhetoric (the latter esp. in Jesuit-run schools), the public schools don't even bother. I think that lacking to be a far greater scientific travesty than whatever gets taught during a Biology class.

Science education in this country is getting ridiculous. We go and try to teach scientific "facts" to kids before we actually teach critical thinking and scientific method. It's the NATURE of science that there are - or should be - no "sacred cows" - including evolution or ID or whatever. There is NO room for dogma in scientific thought, and we are seeing way too many people discount notions of the supernatural simply because it's supernatural. Science should be open to everything - including the unmeasurable and unexplainable.

Some local school board will take the Act as a permit to bring religious instruction into their science classes. That will irk some parents. Those parents will sue. There will be a noisy and expensive federal lawsuit, possibly followed by further noisy and expensive appeals. The school board will inevitably lose. The property owners of that school district will take the financial hit.

...

Helping to defend creationist school boards in federal courts is not the Discovery Institute's game. Their game is to (a) make money from those spurious "textbooks" they put out, and (b) keep creationism in the news so that they don't run out of lecture gigs and wealthy funders. So far as those legal bills are concerned, Discovery Institute policy is: Let the dumb rubes fund their own stupid lawsuits.

Gotta love how LA lawmakers wasted LA taxpayer money creating, discussing, and passing legislation that will be struck down entirely in a matter of months, having had no one actually follow the law during those brief months of effect.

I find it very, very frustrating when the state legislature decides the particulars of what I should teach in the classroom. This bill does not specifically force me, a LA teacher, to teach ID, or the mythical status of global warming, but it does represent law makers meddling in an area they are not experts.

This would be like the legislature directing doctors on the proper methods of suturing a wound, or instructing how to treat a form of cancer. Doctors wouldn't stand for that for more than a second because they are highly trained professionals that know how to do their job. Teachers are also highly trained professionals that know how to do their job without the state meddling directly in the goings on of the classroom.

The new law does not force teachers to teach ID, only makes it acceptable to teach ID as science. This bothers me. This bothers me almost more than I can stand. ID is NOT science. Science is a process of developing TESTABLE theories that can checked and re-checked for error. Until someone creates a litmus test for God, ID is completely unprovable. One might also argue that there is a giant invisible, undetectable yet all powerful beetle that pushes the earth around the sun. If we can't create a test that supports a theory, it's NOT a theory (nor is it science), it's just a nice story.

As a science teacher, my job is to teach science. I teach how to do science, not just words and definitions. I can't even begin to teach ID as science because it is not testable. I teach science as a method of answering questions through experiment and analysis of result. There is no way to do this reliably or reproducibly with ID because God doesn't settle down into a test tube very well.

Let's keep ID where it belongs, in religion classes, not in the science lab. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Science answers questions about the knowable and testable. If it doesn't fit into that category, then it probably fits into religion or philosophy. It is very silly to try and use science to influence religion and even sillier to try and use religion to do science.

Let's keep ID where it belongs, in religion classes, not in the science lab. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Science answers questions about the knowable and testable. If it doesn't fit into that category, then it probably fits into religion or philosophy. It is very silly to try and use science to influence religion and even sillier to try and use religion to do science.

Ugh - the NOMA [wikipedia.org] argument. Listen: there are no questions "off limits" to science. Could love be chemicals? Could souls exist as energy clouds? If god exists what is he thinking? All of these fall in the realm of science if they can be observed. If they can't be observed now, that doesn't mean they automagically become the domain of religion - they just can't be tested by science yet. Even ethics can be broken down in a more scientific way (anthropologically and evolutionarily, it is statistically in our nature not to kill people who don't pose a threat... knowing that, what ethics can we build from it? How can we reliably assess and define threats to expand our consciousness to the possibility that it's never right to kill? etc.)

Point being - religion only matters if you want to believe in it. Beyond that, it's science all the way down.

ID challenges evolution as much as astrology challenges astrophysics.
Just because thinking of something in a very shallow way ("Hey, the Flood must of produced a lot of moving water, so that's how the Grand Canyon was made.") doesn't mean there is any validity to it.
I've read every document I could get my hands on to see what ID can bring to the table but I see absolutely no verified predictions made by it, nor do I see explanation for the facts that are discovered about the world with microscopes, telescopes and the power of modern day science.
People who believe in ID are just lazy thinkers. There I said it. Sorry for being such a dick about it. Spend 15 minutes looking at the evidence for things like the Big Bang and evolution and it's conclusive. Are there better theories out there? Sure. But ID isn't one of them.
Also, expecting a class room of students to be able to debate such things shows how ridiculous the ID crowd is. I can't think of one Nobel prize winner who had to force his theory to be taught in schools so it could be excepted. They *ALL* had to go through the process of convincing the (very skeptical) scientists that the evidence proved them right.

while you're at it you might as well tell everyone how you proved evolution as fact while the rest of the world is still trying...

Ummm, evolution (as a process) is proven. There is no debate about this whatsoever. There is a tiny, vocal crowd disagreeing with that, but you'll find that with anything. Evolution (as the theory explaining the observed facts) can't be proven because nothing in science can be proven - that's not how it works.

Actually, the scientific world doesn't debate whether evolution is a fact or not. They debate the finer points. How fast did these mutations occur? What are the main trigger mechanisms? That sort of thing. But the basic "species change over time giving rise to new species" is as close to scientific fact as you can get. Some creationists get hung up on the word "theory." In science, virtually everything is a theory, not matter how well proven it is. There is a mountain of evidence that evolution happened (and is still happening). Creationism is a nice story, and if you want to believe that God is the one behind the curtains making it all work, go right ahead. But God has no place in a science class, just like science has no place dictating what (if any) prayers you say.

Basically, they had high points of Science and Technology, but their rabid spiritualists tried to force every little thing to be expressed in terms of religion (Just like this bill is doing) until they became what they are today. They were once top in the world, and now they are firmly at the bottom.

Evolution is both a theory and a fact. (un)Intelligent design is pile of crap sugar coated to look like science. It is not a valid scientific hypothesis because it doesn't have an valid data or methodologies to back it up.
I don't know what state or school you were taught in, but in most classes I have attended, the focus isn't on the theory but on how and why the conclusion was reached, it a sad day when politic have driven education to put the focus on the conclusion rather than how the conclusion was reached.

I remember when I was in school (non-US), we had an "alternative creationist theories" lessons, but I remember our teacher saying: "The problem is, there is not much to tell about other theories, because they are... well, not theories in scientific sense of the word." So we had like half of the single lesson (~ 20 min) dedicated to all other theories (I don't even remember them now:) )

Proofs exists only in the abstract world of mathematics and logic. In the real world there is no such thing as a proof... only very, very compelling evidence, and theories that spot-on predict experimental outcomes. And of course, evolution being an intractable algorithmic process, you by definition can not predict the exact outcome of any evolution. But again, if you have ever bothered reading anything on evolution, you would have known that Darwin and evolution is not about the "why" or the "where to" question. Only about the how...

The problem isn't proving that evolution is true. The problem is that ID can't be proven false. It's like demanding Scientology be taught in schools because it can't be proven false even though most sane people know it's just bad science fiction.

No, because the whole point of science is never knowing for sure. You can never stop investigating and experimenting, because there are always things you don't know that you don't know and you have to question everything.

Yes, you can have a significant body of evidence that supports a theory, which can reliably predict outcomes. Classical Newtonian Physics, for instance, works for most things you encounter in your daily life, but is hardly the last word on Physics. Hell, field theory and quantum mechanics pretty much undo it, at least at the microscopic level.

Similarly, Mendelin heredity more or less works, but is hardly the last word on genetics. Even since the discovery of DNA, we've learned all sorts of new things.

Evolution is an observable natural phenomena. Natural Selection seems to explain it, but there could be other things we don't know and so we have to search them out.

Hell, God *could* exist and *could* have intelligently designed the universe. It's highly unlikely, but not impossible. What *IS* certain however, is that the certainty with which ID/Creationist proponents cling to that crap belies any scientific credit that their approach has.

Certainty is the antithesis of science, at least in my view. I'm sure some PhD will come along and bitch slap me down now.

In order to be a legitimate scientific theory you have to be able to create tests that prove a theory as false or inaccurate - not tests that establish the theory as fact.

Once you beat the hell out of a theory from many different angles over a period of time, AND you can begin to accurately predict the outcome of your tests before you execute them, you get CREDIBILITY. It still isn't a FACT. In fact, it's still referred to as a theory by scientists.

The only facts are the results of your TEST.

Now, develop one falsifiable test on a theory of life that has ALL of its function wrapped up in the abilities of an Omnipotent, Omnicient, Omnipresent entity that does not present itself but only lets itself be known to those who demonstrate "faith"?

Now tell me why an Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnipotent entity needs a fucking plan? A plan gets you from state A to state B while minimizing risk and maximizing efficiencies. What part of that is needed by something that can do DO ANYTHING, KNOWS EVERYTHING, AND IS EVERYWHERE AND WHEN?

I am so sick of people spouting off "God's plan" like they have any fucking clue as to the mindset of a being as powerful as a true god. I'm no Atheist, I believe in a god, but not this anthropomorphic piece of social control zealots seem to know so well.

Science and god don't contradict one another, Science and RELIGION do. Its the one thing that religious nuts know and hate. You don't want the truth, you want your story to BE the truth.

ANY argument based on an idea that only becomes credible if you choose to accept DOGMA as truth lacks any understanding of how ANYTHING works. This becomes even more apparent when that DOGMA is focused on humans telling other humans what an OMNIPOTENT, OMNICIENT, and OMNIPRESENT beings's motivations are.

You lack the fundamental ability to even comprehend how such an existence would manifest itself, much less be able to map its quantity and depth of perception to your measly five senses (which happen to be temporally and locally bound).

And before you start ranting on how can I know a god with all this being true, let me say I can't. What I can do is immediately tell anyone who tells me that they know what God wants, or what God was thinking, that they can go fuck themselves.

They are allowing it to be taught on equal footing (I think). That would be similar to allowing an alternate teaching of gravity. Nobody has proven the fundamental reason gravity works, though it has been demonstrated that the effect has certain parameters and is highly repeatable. Evolution has similar backing. Other theories, such as the various stories of creation by Christians, Pastafarians, et alias, do not have the base of scientific review. It is not "science." It should be taught in the appropriate class - i.e. Religion.

If some people want to call parts of science class a sham, that's fine. Science has been shown to be wrong in some cases over time, such as the model of the atom, but science is specifically about updating as new discoveries are found. Don't start teaching religion in science class, or literature in mathematics class for that matter.

Evolution is a fact. The theory element is the historical path, which makes sense (we obviously can't test the past 65M years).
Ask any biologist, who work with evolutionary principles on a daily basis, whether evolution is a fact or not.

You're missing the point, ID is not science and shouldn't be taught in a science class. It's perfect for a class on religion or christianity, but don't even try to present it as some sort of equally plausible alternative to evolution.

When I was a kid in school I had classes on all the major religions, and their creation myths, including christianity. I've read the old testament in literature classes. I've had physics classes that taught about the Big Bang. And I've had biology classes that taught evolution.

Noone is saying that we shouldn't teach everything, but each thing has a place, and biology classes is not the place for ID.